High school hockey: Mentor pulls away from Chagrin in third period (with two videos and audio)

KENT -- Mentor had to put up with some tailgating for a little more than two periods Friday night from Chagrin Falls.

Then in the third, the Cardinals got into gear to pull away.

Ryan Posipanka recorded a hat trick, and Mentor scored three goals in a 6-minute, 17-second span to blow open a 5-2 victory at Kent State in the Adam Hamilton Memorial tournament.

The Cardinals (3-2) were having no trouble generating shots with a 41-18 advantage for the game, but until the third-period spurt, they had a tough time shaking off the Tigers (0-2).

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"I thought we had momentum going for most of the game," Mentor coach Paul McKito said. "There were a couple chances where we were really starting to push them back.

"We kept giving them a couple spurts here and there, and finally, coming out in the third, I told our guys, 'You make sure we're getting pucks deep, getting it behind their D, making them go back and get it. Put bodies on their bodies.' Just try and finally break them here."

Locked in a 2-2 game, Posipanka provided the break to send Mentor on its way. At the 3:08 mark of the third, the junior forward intervened on an attempted Chagrin defensive-zone clearance and shelved a wrister to the top right corner to give the Cardinals the lead for good. Andrew Cannata and Nikita Goldman added tallies 34 seconds apart later in the period for the final margin.

"We just had the possession of the puck, and we lost it," said Posipanka of the sequence leading to his go-ahead goal. "I think someone tried to flip it out of the zone, I just caught it, dropped it and then went around a guy and put it top right.

"It was very frustrating (through two periods), because we had so many opportunities. We just couldn't put it in."

The Tigers, in their first meeting all-time with Mentor, put on a solid defensive-zone effort despite playing with a short bench and having standout defenseman Jack Campbell in street clothes due to injury.

Posipanka had given the Cardinals a 2-1 lead with 1:52 to go in the second period on a power play, pouncing on a long rebound from an initial Cannata look from the right circle. Chagrin had a quick response, though, when sophomore T.J. Subel struck with a wrister 23 seconds later to make it a 2-2 game heading into the third despite being outshot to that point, 29-12.

"We were missing some people, and it's very hard to play like that," Tigers coach Mark Ferfolia said. "But we went into a very passive system tonight. We knew we were going to get outshot, and then (freshman goaltender Jackson Markley, who had 36 saves) stepped in and played phenomenal.

"The fact that we played a Red Division team, and it was a good Red Division team, I was pretty happy with what we did."